X-Men #15 annotations
X-MEN vol 7 #15
“Twin”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Pencillers, co-inkers: Ryan Stegman & CF Villa
Co-inkers: JP Mayer & Livesay
Colourist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN
Cyclops does his usual team leader routine, and Temper spends the issue trying to save Piper from her twin.
Magik summons up demons from Limbo to help the search operation. We’ve seen her randomly call up demons in the past, despite the fact that Madelyne Pryor is meant to be running Limbo now. On this occasion, she makes the demons an “offer of minionship, short-term”, and lets them drink her blood as the price; she doesn’t seem to have any particular concerns about consequences for this. Perhaps she has to make a more explicit deal if she wants the demons to do something actually useful, instead of just turning them loose and hoping that they cause chaos.
Xorn describes these creatures as “imps”, and there’s nothing to suggest that they aren’t making a sincere effort to carry out their instructions. The imps call Magik “dread mistress”, but it’s not clear whether that’s because of the deal or because of her former status in Limbo. In addressing her demons, she refers to mutants as “witchbreed”, consistently with how they were described in Otherworld during the Krakoan era.
She seems to have a lot less sympathy for the twin than anyone else, and calmly teleports Juggernaut in to try and destroy its body. To be fair, she has every reason to think that it can reconstitute itself.
The Juggernaut. He finds Magik’s dealings with the imps “gross” because of the blood, but has no real answer to her comeback that his own powers arise from a demonic pact. As shown in flashback in X-Men #12 (1965), he originally gained powers by grabbing a gem empowered by Cyttorak. Okay, he didn’t read the inscription, but it was there on display.
Psylocke. She tries to make psychic contract with the twin and give it a normal heroic pep talk, though she talks about knowing “more than anyone” that lashing out at people won’t help anything. Cassandra mocks her as a “queen of killers” with “bloodstained fingerprints”, evidently aware that it’s likely to get under her skin.
Kid Omega remains missing after last issue’s explosion, and doesn’t appear.
The X-Men still have the Quinjet that we saw in X-Men: From the Ashes Infinity Comic #15.
SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Piper Cobb. She’s 13. We established last issue that she had a mutant twin who had apparently been consumed by her in the womb, and continued to live inside her. A flashback establishes that the disappearance of the other twin was noticed, but was attributed to resorption (which is indeed a real thing).
Once her twin departs her body, she regains her senses, with no memory of how she got there.
Rose Ellen Cobb. Piper’s mother appears in the flashback to her pregnancy.
Xorn. He can sense deaths. He can’t sense Quentin’s death but doesn’t seem to regard that as conclusive – this might be because the power itself is unreliable or simply because he isn’t sure that the body would have been in range of his power.
Jen Starkey. She’s nervous at the thought of being sent to scout the big monster and protests that she can’t fight. Beast also thinks that she’s not ready for this job. Psylocke disagrees, and thinks that everyone has been “coddling her” since rescuing her from the Upstarts in issue #4. In Psylocke’s view, Jen has been encouraged to hide away from the world rather than getting over her fears.
Magneto has some sort of “prosthetic” for use in emergencies, which the Beast has to help him to get ready.
VILLAINS
The twin. They have no name, since nobody knew they existed. They regard themselves as having been trapped for 13 years, so apparently they’ve either only just developed their powers to the point of being able to make a body of their own, or they needed an enormous body like the dead Acanti to work with. They remake the Acanti into a sort of giant reptilian monster thing. Her powers are described as “biokinesis” and “flesh manipulation”. The Beast cites two other characters with similar powers: Lionel Jeffries (Scramble from mid-1980s Alpha Flight) and Kenji Uedo (Zero, last seen in Dark X-Men).
The twin regards Piper as “a sister who took everything from me” and her mother as “a mother who would hate me” – we saw in issue #7 that Rose was an anti-mutant conspiracist. Even though none of this was intentional, she initially seems to want to avenge herself by killing Piper, but Cassandra Nova’s intervention seems to persuade her that Merle is a more deserving target, due to its history of Sentinel manufacture.
Cassandra Nova. She tries to persuade the twin that Temper is deliberately luring it away from town (probably true in the sense that she’s hardly likely to deliberately head for town with a giant monster in tow). She blocks Psylocke’s attempts to talk to the twin telepathically and persuades her that Cyclops’ entreaties are lies.
The Chairman of 3K wears a vaguely Cerebro-like helmet. It’s a bit reminiscent of Dr Stasis.
Wyre. He regards the twin as “the new recruit”. He leads a team who are said to have performed badly in Santo Marco – this would be the six 3K-created mutants that we saw with AIM in issue #1, and who were transported away by 3K at the end. They’re apparently the six fake X-Men who show up on the last page. The characters in issue #1 did indeed seem to have similar powers to what we see here, as far as it’s possible to tell.
The page where Cyclops is flying in and says “You don’t have to do this…” – Cassandra replies with “He’s lying”, and then I can’t work out what happens. The quinjet explodes, looking like it knocks the monster back (as if the monster didn’t cause it?) and… Illyana says “No! Liar!”? In response to Cassandra’s tekepathy???
I also don’t really know why the emerging twin gave Piper reptile parts.
So after seeing the Chairman this issue, we’re all agreed the Chairman is Doug, right?
So I guess it WAS 3K that sent the Wild Sentinel to Merle and it was after Piper? Cassandra doesn’t say so explicitly but there doesn’t seem to be any other explanation.
It probably is Doug, but that would be the most boring reveal. Who is the mysterious big bad? Oh, it’s that B lister who was set up as a big bad a few short months ago.
Umm…following up on The Wyre being revealed as the next member of 3K, Dougpocalypse would be incredibly exciting. I mean, the alternate choice of The Locust should make readers glad it was Doug.
Too bad Hickman didn’t get to use his original plans for Doug, or Doug being revealed as Mr. Chairman would be highly anticipated.
Wait a second. He should be called Ramsey the Damned to continue with En Sabah Nur’s Egyptian heritage (get it?).
@Chris V: and Solomon Grundy could cross over from DC and his appearance would be such a surprise that people would exclaim, “Oh! Cyrus!”
… no? Fair.
Anyway, I liked the pacing of the issue and the fact that the 3K stuff is moving forward. I’m not crazy about the fact that this issue ends with a dramatic splash page reveal of characters I couldn’t name if you paid me. Issue 1 was awhile ago, and they didn’t make a big impression then. They played up Wyre’s intro a few issues ago, and it also fell flat. I don’t get it.
@Dave , probably because the unnamed mutant twin (not known yet what gender) , being lesser developed than Piper , is using more of the primal reptile brain than the advanced mammal brain LOL
And this is uncannily similar to the actual plot of the 2021 James Wan’ scary movie Malignant (surprisingly enough , it’s from Warner Brothers instead of JW’s most usual collaborator Blumhouse) . I guess Marvel Comic is being inspired once again by ideas from Hollywood KEK
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malignant_(2021_film)
@Michael: I don’t think MacKay would be quite *that* predictable, especially since one of his goals seems to be repopulating the villain landscape: so far we’ve had Orchis remnants, 3K, Sugar Man and Fitzroy’s Upstarts, and Xanos Starblood – there isn’t really any need for Doug/Revelation to be folded into 3K when he could represent an entirely separate threat.
@Dave It’s the monster who verbally screams out “No, liar!” at Cyclops (After Nova’s telepathic prompting) and uses its giant fist to hit the ship, which makes it explode. The fist is blurrier than it needs to be but you can make out fingers, or at least the bent thumb.
I enjoyed this issue, thought it was a lot of fun and I am happy to see X-Men fight supervillains instead of other X-Men.
Cassandra Nova being pro-mutant threw me a little bit but I guess that’s the (original) X-Men Red and Marauders plotline that turned into her new status quo and I just forgot (and I didn’t finish that Marauders run).
Or she’s lying to Piper’s twin. The 3K scenes so far didn’t scream ‘we’re doing this for mutants’ to me.
I liked this issue. I like most of the issues in this series. It’s admirable that MacKay is repopulating the x-villain pool, though I am a little wary. Wyre didn’t exactly amaze me.
And while I like villain teams – especially when we get a glimpse into their inner workings – MacKay has a penchant for creating villains that make a good first impression without any follow-through. From the pages of Avengers – The Ashen Combine, The Vampire Whatstheirname (wait, was ‘The Blood Hunt’ the name of the villain group?). They all had good designs and a gimmick and that was that. And sometimes a good design and a gimmick is enough, but… I couldn’t tell you what the gimmicks of the vampire bosses were.
And the evil X-Men don’t even have good designs. Well, maybe one or two of them do.
(I actually liked MacKay’s take on the Upstarts and wouldn’t mind seeing those losers again. Which, when I think about it, boils down to: I’d like some follow-through on them.)
@Diana- MacKay also wrote Blood Hunt, where everybody realized it was Varnae possessing Blade after the first issue.
@alsoMike, Krysziek- We see in the Infinity Comics that she’s working with the X-Cutioner to foment hatred against mutants. If the Chairman IS Doug it’s possible that encouraging mutants and humans to hate each other is part of the plan- to winnow out the “weak”.
Oh, I see it now. I thought the blurry fist was the whole monster.
@Chris V: What do you mean by Hickman’s original plans for Doug? I know the Cerebro Podcast believes Hickman was going to turn Cypher into an uber-villain, but I always thought those theories were bunk.
As for 3K, they are clearly meant to be derivatives of the Quiet Council.
Cassandra Nova is a derivative of Professor X.
Astra + Joseph are derivatives of Magneto.
Wyre is a derivative of Cable.
Cable wasn’t part of the QC, but he was a part of the Summers family.
So I wouldn’t be surprised if Revelation, the derivative of Apocalypse, is part of this council too. The Chairman talking about “crucibles” and 3K standing for the year 3000 hints at this as well.
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